Topics

Paul A. Volcker served two terms as Federal Reserve chairman under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. While some of Volcker's policies during that time, including rapid increases in interest rates, were considered unpopular, he is credited with helping tame the United States' inflation problems of the 1970s.

Following his leadership role in the Fed, Volcker had been tapped in 2004 to research possible corruption in the United Nations Oil for Food Program. Volcker's latest appointment comes as chairman of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board under President-elect Barack Obama.

Born in 1927 in Cape May, N.J., Volcker earned a bachelor's degree from Princeton and a master's from the Harvard University Graduate School of Public Administration. Before leading the Federal Reserve, he served as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Related "Paul Volcker" Articles

The militarization of the Mexican border is a new phenomenon for two nations whose militaries have traditionally been made to stay out of politics. There are constant expansions of our prisons, and further explosions of the drug-related caseloads of our...

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen met Friday with a group of conservative activists who are unhappy with the way the central bank is conducting its interest-rate policies. The meeting, which was set up in early February, came two days after Yellen came...

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen came under fire Wednesday from House Republicans, who challenged the central bank's lack of accountability during her second day of testimony to Congress. After she gave her semiannual economic report, GOP lawmakers on...

Two things are guaranteed to inspire envy or hatred in Washington: access to the president and the power to turn that access into action. The person who has both is guaranteed to face a torrent of criticism, deserved or not. In the Obama administration,...

"AMERICA IS the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." -- Oscar Wilde
SPEAKING OF decadence, that word has been used and overused, but perhaps not without cause in the fabulous 1970s.
From 1973...